The Army Could Be Forced To Let Bradley Manning Get A Sex Change

The Army says
it's not going to let Bradley Manning get a sex change, but
his lawyer has vowed to do everything he can to make sure his
client can get the female hormones he needs to live as Chelsea
Manning in military prison.

Manning — the Army private who got 35 years in military prison
for a massive security leak — may have some legal precedent on
his side in his fight to live as a woman.

While the U.S. military doesn't provide hormones or sex-change
surgery for its prisoners, transgender inmates in civilian
prisons have been able to live in their chosen gender in some
cases.

A couple of years ago, the Bureau of Prisons' official policy was
to let transgender inmates take hormones to live as the opposite
gender
if they were already doing so before they were put away.
However, the BOP changed its policy in 2011 to settle a
lawsuit brought by Vanessa Adams, who was diagnosed with
gender identity disorder after going to prison and
wanted to take female hormones. Under the new policy, the BOP
evaluates transgender inmates and gives them hormones if
necessary.

In deciding whether to house a transgender inmate in a male or
female facility, the Bureau of Prisons considers a prisoner's
safety and makes a decision on a case-by-case
basis.

Last year, a federal judge in Massachusetts went a little further
than allowing sex-change hormones in prison. Judge Mark Wolf
ordered the Massachusetts Department of Correction to
provide a sex-change operation to Michelle Kosilek, who
killed her wife when she was living as Robert.

“This fact that sex reassignment surgery is for some people
medically necessary has recently become more widely recognized,”
Judge Mark Wolf wrote in a 129-page ruling.

While the Army seems intent on not letting Manning live as a
woman in prison, transgender advocates have said that prisoners
in military prisons should get the same health care as civilian
inmates,
ABC News reported.